Darkened Building Shootout

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The Denouement of any number of made-for-TV thrillers in the 80s. The hero pursues the villain through a darkened building. They both have guns. They shoot at each other. The guns flash brightly in the dark. The shots echo and ricochet. Finally the hero has One Bullet Left. The villain has moved round behind him in the dark. He is about to shoot. The hero turns and fires his last bullet. The villain is shot squarely in the chest. He flies back (for extra points he falls a huge distance over a balcony or into a stairwell). The villain lands, dead, on his back, eyes open and staring. Focus on face. Cut to hero returning to the sunlit world outside. Final Aesop if any, roll credits.

Examples:

The manga version of Chrono Crusade has a shootout in a darkened warehouse that's similar to this, although it has two variations—first, it's the heroes that get chased into the building by the villains, not the other way around. Second, Rosette realizes that their enemies are using the darkness as a psychological attack, and shoots at a spilled puddle of some flammable liquid, causing the building to set on fire. This gives them more light at the climax of the fight, but also increases the danger and splits the group up into pairs. (Also, it takes place in the middle of the series, not the end.)

Used in an episode of Noir, where the girls find themselves the targets. But Kirika gives them an advantage by putting popcorn on the floor. She's so uncannily good that she can tell from the sound of it being broken where the Mooks are and shoot them accurately.

Comic Book

The hero of the Sin City story Hell And Back gets involved in a shootout that spans two buildings. In one dark building is a sniper with a night-vision scope. In the pitch-black apartment across the alley, is our protagonist Wallace, who has no night-vision and only goes off the glint of the sniper's rifle to tell where his foe is hiding. The gunfight ends in a Scope Snipe.

The Bodyguard From Beijing had its climax in a Big Fancy House where the titular bodyguard takes on legions of assassins while the lights are out. The bodyguard manage to take out several opponents by throwing torchlights towards where he hear the assassins approaching, and gunning them down quick-draw style, and when seeing the silohoutte of several baddies near a television, flicks on the TV using a remote and firing away at the revealed assassins.

Used in On Deadly Ground; the oil rig fits once Forrest Taft cuts its power. The methods of killing turn quite creative there...

The Fritz Lang movie Ministry of Fear (1944) has a climactic shootout with Nazi spies on a stairwell lit only by their muzzle flashes. The scene where Carla shoots Willi is another example — Willi slams a door shut, followed by Carla pulling the trigger inside a darkened room, with light shining through the sudden hole in the door. Willi is dead on the other side.

Happens at the climax of The Silence of the Lambs, when Buffalo Bill kills the lights in his basement. He is following Clarice using night-vision goggles, and it is seen from his point of view when she suddenly turns around and shoots him and the screen goes white. (In the book the same thing happens, but narrated more from Clarice's perspective.) It's worth noting that Clarice fires not because of a sixth sense or intuition, but because Bill cocks his revolver and she fires six times at the noise, two or three of which hit him.

The final shootout in L.A. Confidential (which provides the page image) takes place in an unlit cabin.

The JCVD movie Double Impact has an interesting subversion - there's a darkened room fight, hand to hand, in the single most interesting and memorable scene in the movie.

Shoot 'em Up. A villain tries to kill Mr Smith in a public toilet. A bullet knocks out the light, and for a brief time the scene is only lit by the muzzle flashes of his Hand Cannon. Then another bullet punches a large hole in the door, throwing a beam of light on the hot air dryer which is then used by Smith to turn the tables (by scorching the villain's hand during their Gun Struggle) then heating up Smith's own gun (which he accidentally dropped in the toilet) so it can fire again.

During one major shootout in Alone in the Dark (2005) the lights go out, death metal strikes up, and the viewer is treated to a seizure-inducing muzzle flash light show while the protagonists mow down Mooks.

Both downplayed and exaggerated in Don't Breathe when the Blind Man corners Rocky and Alex in his basement. Downplayed because only the Blind Man has a gun. Exaggerated because the Blind Man turns off the power to the entire basement, leaving Rocky and Alex blundering in pitch darkness that doesn't mean a thing to him. Several times, he attempts to shoot them based on their voices.

Literature

Lampshaded in Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident, where LEP officers are drilled never to enter an unsecured building in a firefight without backup. Never. So guess what Holly proceeds to do when she's chasing down a smuggler. In her defense, it worked.

In Therin Knite'sEchoes series, the deserted Club Valkyrie shootout in Echoes (the first book). Dynara manages to land a shot on an assassin in the shadows of a pitch black dance floor from fifty feet away.

In the climax to Mercenary's Star - a BattleTech Expanded Universe novel - the protagonist steals a Humongous Mecha with a blown-out canopy and engages the Kurita occupational forces in an abandoned storage warehouse. Without the canopy's protective polarization filter, he must alternate his eyes when firing the mech's blinding Lightning Guns.

Live Action TV

All climactic shootings in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that were actually held on the space station. Good thing phasers put out light...

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In "Touched" Faith and the Potentials get into hand-to-hand combat with the Bringers in a dark room, the action lit solely by the torches the good guys are carrying.

A variation involving pitch-black jungles in The Pacific. Parts I, II and IV all involve frantic shootouts at night, (the Battles of the Tenaru, Henderson Field, and New Gloucester, respectively) where it's so dark that often the only available light are the muzzle flashes of the Marines' rifles and machine guns, or the occasional flash of lightning. This was actually a point of criticism about the series, but very much Truth in Television.

Sherlock. Although not involving gunshots, the hand-to-hand struggle between our heroes and the Golem in a darkened auditorium is portrayed the same way, with the flashes of light caused by a cinema projector turning on and off.

Point Blank has one as a challenge - which proves quite challenging as you can only see when you fire (your targets are cardboard cutouts) and there are civilian targets too.

Modern Warfare has one when you and Captain Price storm a building after Gaz cuts the power - though you have an advantage: "These night-vision goggles make it too easy." You then go through a pitch black house with suppressed weapons - with your night vision you can see enemies fumbling through the dark or pointing guns at whatever noises they hear.

Unfortunately for you this gets inverted in the last room where someone has a flashlight taped to a shotgun - which overloads the goggles.

Modern Warfare 2 has a similar moment in the gulag level, where a number of enemy troops are moving down a corridor in the darkness. However, they also have night vision goggles....

Also, the entire level "Second Sun" is one of these.

Second Sun is Narm if you can't see what's going on in the dark. Better adjust your brightness settings up a little.

The third level of Syphon Filter 2 has one of these in a darkened highway tunnel.

Also, there are other levels which involve the use of Night-Vision Goggles to see in dark caves or buildings. Finally, there is a cheat that turns every level into this trope by removing all the lighting and equipping night vision at the start.

Doom 3 is full of these, such as the level where you escort a scientist with a lantern through pitch-black corridors. Quake IV to a lesser extent.

The climax of the Death Battle between Solid Snake and Sam Fisher features this after Snake shuts off all the lights in the building that they were fighting in. Neither one can kill the other with guns though, since both have tech that has night-vision. In the end, it comes down to a knife fight in the darkened building, with Snake walking away alive.

Pat Garrett vs Billy the Kid. In reality, though, a shirtless and sleepy Billy headed to the door to see Grant's silhouette in the doorway. As the Kid asked "Who's there?" in Spanish, Garrett quickly shot him in the chest.

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